I am one of the national winners in the GovGab Guest Writer Challenge. GovGab is a U.S. government blog from the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies located in the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

They announced the national winners on November 15 and are publishing one winning blog entry a day all week long on GovGab. My winning blog entry, “Adult Immunizations” appears today, Thursday, November 18, 2010.


So, what does this have to do with Mormons? Well, I'll tell you.

President Hinckley warned:
“It is so very important that you do not let praise and adulation go to your head. Adulation is poison. You better never lose sight of the fact that the Lord put you where you are according to His design, which you don’t understand." Originally from “Messages of Inspiration from President Hinckley,” Church News, July 1, 2000, 2. Quoted in Paul E. Koelliker, “Recognizing Righteous Leadership,” Ensign, Jul 2010, 30–32.
Adulation is poison. I ought to know. I've earned enough of it. All through school I earned, or was bestowed, one honor after another. But, I didn't want A LOT of them. I wanted them ALL. I wonder now how many people ended up abased so that I could be exalted. My satisfaction only lasted a short time before I needed something else to buoy me up. Or was it another "fix" I needed?  It makes me sick to think about it now.


So, I have another honor now to further corrupt me. Or perhaps if I can somehow deal with it differently, I can turn it into a REAL positive.


I certainly can't deny Heavenly Father assisted me. When I first read about the contest I immediately thought about adult immunizations. The winners would be published right after the flu season got underway. I thought my idea was perfectly timed. Or was it my idea?


A quick search of GovGab assured me the topic hadn't been done yet for adults. I quickly wrote up a narrative, edited it after a few days and decided to send it in. I thought to myself, "It can't be this easy, can it?" It can, and was, with Heavenly Father's help.


My emotional self is puffed up. My intellectual self tells me that this may be an opportunity to do a great deal of good. Perhaps my fifteen minutes of fame can achieve something. After reading an article entitled, "Mormon pianist Desirae Brown looking at uncertain future because of rare eye ailment" a purpose occurs to me.


Desirae Brown is one of the 5 Browns. All five Mormon siblings are concert pianists. I was able to hear them play and speak at a missionary fireside in the Kansas City area a few months back when they were performing here. Desirae wore dark glasses. Her brother explained her eye condition and how she had already endured several surgeries. I don't think they had a diagnosis at that time, but they still had hope. Now they have a diagnosis, she is blind in that eye and there is no hope of regaining her vision. In fact, her other eye is also threatened. The diagnosis astonished and saddened me. It also explains my reasons behind this posting today.
"It took a while to diagnose it because this is so rare."
Brown has acute retina necrosis, a condition caused by the chicken pox virus that lingers in the system and sometimes comes back in adults as shingles or, as in her case, an attack on the retina.
It usually attacks both eyes. Brown, her husband and her four siblings are praying that her right eye will remain good.
Thirty-one is awfully young to have to deal with chicken pox/shingles complications. There is a vaccine against shingles or reemergence of the chicken pox virus. I include the information in my GovGab guest writer blog entry.

So, please don't congratulate me for for yet another award. Please don't tell me you read my posting. Please DO tell me the posting helped you resolve to get immunized or that you DID get immunized. In the end, that will mean a lot more.



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